Monthly Archives: January 2013

This is the strangest argument against gay marriage that I’ve seen yet, I wish I could read it written out formally by the lawyers who said it. It’s bizarre and weak, and apparently the one that the Prop 8 crowd are taking before the Supreme Court.

Here’s the article by the LA Times, and here’s where you can read Greta Christina’s take on it, where I found the link.

“It is plainly reasonable for California to maintain a unique institution [referring to marriage] to address the unique challenges posed by the unique procreative potential of sexual relationships between men and women,” argued Washington attorney Charles J. Cooper, representing the defenders of Proposition 8. Same-sex couples need not be included in the definition of marriage, he said, because they “don’t present a threat of irresponsible procreation.”

Yeah. What puzzles me about this is that it’s by far the most demeaning description of marriage I’ve ever read. Every married couple should be offended by this, and it just gets worse the more I think about it!

Have you ever had a song you liked, and then when you looked up the lyrics you didn’t like it so much anymore?

Since I’m sitting here at the keyboard thinking about it, and it is tangentially related to the holiday today, I may as well put this out there.

This is “Waiting on the World to Change”, by John Mayer. It got stuck in my head last Wednesday morning, so I tracked it down on the internet, listened to it a few times and eventually the lyrics sank in. It was this line that made me look up the complete lyrics:

It’s not that we don’t care,
We just know that the fight ain’t fair
So we keep on waiting
Waiting on the world to change

Young people, the fight’s never going to be fair. And if you wait, as the song suggests, until you’re the ones in charge, then you’ll have an even harder fight ahead of you, because your opposition is not going to rest and wait until they lose their advantage.

Today honors a man who knew that the fight was not and would not be fair, that changing things would require people willing to go to jail and even die. Not to guarantee victory, but merely to force a negotiation.

Like this:

My mother once told me that she’d been living in an apartment in downtown Fresno when Dr. King was murdered. She mentioned the news in passing to her landlord, and his response was “Just another dead nigger.”

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Barack Obama’s presidency, it’s that we aren’t nearly as far away from this as we should be. Whether or not a modern King would be jailed under the NDAA for his radicalism.

(Incidentally, that second link is very interesting and you should check it out.)

Like this:

Clearly I haven’t been posting enough lately, because my search terms this month were all pretty boring. Even depressing. So I’m just giving you my favorite this time, the one that made me smile and wasn’t pathetic.

I’m thinking of going to see Greta Christina speak tomorrow, partly because she’s generally awesome, partly because the subject is interesting to me, partly because it’s an excuse to get out into San Francisco, but mostly because I want to see the famous shoeswhich causedso much controversy.

Something that was said in the comments was interesting to me, the idea that if a man buys an expensive pair of dress shoes, it’s a valid investment in professional attire, while if a woman does this it’s a frivolous fashion expense.

I haven’t really encountered this attitude, but it does fit perfectly into the sort of casual sexism I see pretty much everywhere. The “can’t win” part fits, certainly. Consider: A woman who buys a well-made pair of shoes for work is criticized for spending so much on fashion, while a woman buying & wearing cheap shoes will be criticized for her unprofessional appearance.

The other things that come to mind are first that I should have given those boots at the vintage clothing store more of a chance, and that considering how much I walk (and the Sam Vimes “boots” theory of economic unfairness) it may well be worthwhile for me to save up and buy a $200-$300 pair of shoes. As long as I can find something that goes well with everything, of course.